Faculty Council Minutes January 9, 2001

Announcements:

Marylin Link shared encouragement with the faculty to consider applying to attend renewal sessions at the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching.  Registration begins soon for summer seminars.  Marylin lauded the program and food; indeed, just last weekend the NY Times ran an article on the center, hailing it as a national model.  Word has it they take care of NC teachers really well.  Check them out at www.nccat.org

Dot Doyle informed the faculty that the faculty has approximately 700.00 dollars to disperse and charged the welfare committee with making a recommendation.

Diane Futrelle alerted the faculty to the new digital copiers that have been installed at the school.  A color one is also available; all will be networked eventually.  They do everything but grade papers.

Discussion Item:  Grading Policies

After commending the faculty and students for their excellent work, Jerry Boarman took the floor and apprised the faculty of several issues of concern: technology, grading, and quality points.   The latter two served as the basis for the discussion that followed. 

First, Jerry alerted the faculty that, for SACs and communications purposes, our grading policies need to be better articulated.  External organizations need to be able to readily see goals, outcomes, and measurements. 

Second, Jerry outlined for the faculty various challenges that our students face when applying to colleges, perhaps most importantly that our students do not earn extra points for taking honors/accelerated/AP courses at Science and Math they would at home.  It is Jerry’s opinion that our kids are not getting into some top-notch schools because the discrepancy between grade point average (as determined by the college) and SAT score is too great.  Essentially, our kids are penalized in the application process because their transcripts from NCSSM do not reflect the advanced curriculum here. Jerry saw this as a pressing issue that impacts more kids than we might imagine.  For example, their rejection from top out-of-state schools is camouflaged by the fact that so many of our students attend local universities, such as UNC and NC State.  This access to universities of national reputation is unique among consortium schools.

Many related issued concerning student grades affect the health of the student transcript, including, perhaps, grade deflation.  For example, 67% of entering juniors arrive to NCSSM with straight As.  Jerry reiterated that this is not a college, but a high school, and that young students need a many opportunities for assessment during the semester.  He also questioned how we grade from course to course.  He would like to see us recognize excellence in student and faculty work more often and more visibly.  He reiterated that we do a good job, but could do better. A committee, the Grade Task Force, will be formed to examine this issue; please sign up for it.

Jerry then opened up the floor.  Several faculty asked questions and commented upon Jerry’s remarks:

Woodmansee: observed that quality points assigned by universities began several years ago, and that the faculty has discussed the issue previously.  What needs to happen to get our classes those quality points?

Doyle: In addition to addressing the quality point issue, should we look to recognize students via a dean’s list?  (This was an earlier Faculty Council issue.)

Winborn: Could we simply change course names?

Craft: Quality points are irrelevant because each university does its own computing.

Hudson:  Changing names to indicate accelerated nature of courses here could work.  The state has a standardized transcript, while NCSSM does not.  Perhaps there should be one course catalogue for the colleges and one for the kids?

Shlensky:  Each rec I write contains info about the school.

Miller:  National recognition for the school came early on and has dissipated.  Yet, we have the 3^rd highest SAT in the state, behind entering frosh at Duke and Davidson.  Let’s remind colleges of this fact.

Graves:  J. Boarman has raised a large collection of issues.

Britton:  Are we discriminating fairly in our grades?  It would seem so on the low end (i.e. that low grades, such as Cs and Ds are awarded consistently). 

Morrison:  At college fairs there is marketing; how can we make personal faculty contact possible with college reps to explain our program?

Miller:  We must remind schools in rec letters how special we are.

Bullard:  Could we do better at saying thanks to home schools for the kids they send us?

Moose:  How do we make the playing field level, from the department level to the personal level.  How do we allow kids to tell us what they know in our classes?  We can start making changes tomorrow if we believe that we need to provide students with lots of ways for students to show us what they know.

Doyle:  This also relates to teacher and student workload.  We spent much of first semester talking about student workload; the more we take up work, the more work we create for both the students and us.

Unidentified Faculty Person/People:  Not every assignment needs to be collected and graded.

Boarman: Private schools understand grades have great impact.  NCSSM outcomes are not articulated well on paper – we are not the only game in town.  As an example, no job descriptions exist.  Also, some teachers use pluses and minuses in grading while some do not.

Hudson:  We are not talking about C students, but about how MIT distinguishes between a B+ and a B-.  MIT makes no distinction.

Barrett:  If College Board scores are lower than grades (grades are much higher than SAT) this would point to grade inflation.  Jerry’s raising tough issues coming in from the outside – this could be a good thing.  It’s like having a real estate agent walk through your house and pointing out what’s wrong.

Boarman:  The bottom line is that colleges don’t have the time to individually review applications.  Numbers matter when they receive 15,000 applications and need to weed out kids quickly.  Right now we are hurting our kids.

Doyle:  Jerry is asking us to make decisions based on data, not on anecdotal evidence.  I would encourage you to sign up for the committee.

Boarman:  It is OK to disagree with me.   (Jerry did mention several times throughout the course of the discussion that he welcomes opposing views.)